Notwithstanding its specific relevance for China, guanxi has been accepted as a valid sociocultural construct in a variety of disciplines including business, management and marketing (Chen & Chen, 2004). Guanxi involves ‘dyadic relationships that are based implicitly (rather than explicitly) on mutual interest and benefit’ (Yang, 1994). The term ‘guanxi orientation’ refers to a psychological inclination and behavioural mode based on guanxi, whereby individual people consider both themselves and others for the purpose of fixing their own role and reacting to outsiders (Zuo, 2002). Yang (2005) included guanxi orientation as an important component of social orientation, adopting ‘relational determinism’ as a way of emphasizing the importance of this concept: during social interactions, Chinese people tend to use different ways of treating their fellow interlocutors according to the level of shared guanxi.